


Soar

by Nerin



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-18 23:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2366657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerin/pseuds/Nerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written pre-Chapter 140. Basically a Chapter 139.5 fanfic. Living proof that Ishida-sensei had forever seared Chapter 139 into the recesses of my brain. Boo hoo. </p><p>I swear I was trying to write Shuuneki. But it is so blink-and-miss that I obviously failed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soar

He lays there, chest painfully heaving, catching spurts and gasps of air as his lungs press hard against his rib cage. He is almost like a newborn struggling to take its first breath, or die trying to achieve the same.

_Nineteen years ago, 20 December. I see lilies surrounding a maternity ward, their hanging heads imparting a delicate fragrance onto a baby, anointing him with their perfume. Thus a child was born unto this world, and his name shall be called Kaneki Ken._

_Ring-around-the-rosies-a-pocket-full-of-po no lilies?_

_Hack their heads and they all fall down!_

IXA thrusts brutally and unhesitatingly into his socket, grinding itself in like a screw with workmanlike efficiency. He is howling within like a maimed animal but the strings of his vocal chords are hoarse and numb. His muscles tense up and strain to pull themselves back together. He raises his trembling hand to the ceiling, like a corpse trying to rise from its grave.

_Mother…I want to eat your lovely steak_

_Father…I want to read your old books_

_Don’t leave me to Aunt_

"Terribly sorry, Kaneki Ken. I only need a new Quinque but the CCG expects more than that from you."

With that, a sharp and sudden electrical current fires throughout his body, its sparks seizing his nerves, tearing up his spinal cord and piercing through whatever sodden mess that was left of his brain.

_Star light, star bright_

_Wish I may, wish I might_

_Fireworks_

_Three months ago, 15 August. Hinami’s shy but eager smile as she put on her first yukata. Banjou picking out a sentai mask and doing a hero’s victory pose. I was never good at matsuri games. He caught me my first goldfish. And there were fireworks._

A rough tug at his collar and he feels his limp body being slowly dragged across the floor, as the lilies silently watch the spectacle before them. A room with a checkered floor, a wooden chair and a box of metal implements flashes before his mind and instantly triggers off a primordial response. He flails weakly and helplessly, making unintelligible and barely audible grunts, like a beast stuck and struggling in the wet mud as the hunter’s arrows beat down relentlessly.

_NoIcan’tgobackthereagain!Ican’tgobackthereagain!Ican’tgobackthereagain!Ican’tgobackthereagain!Ican’tgobackthereagain!_

_Ican’tgobackthereagain!Ican’tgobackthereagain!Ican’tgobackthereagain!Ican’tgobackthereagain!_

Arima looks at the pitiful creature beneath him, with all the solemnity of a god carved into marble - not unaware of the tragedy before him but aloof to its individual existence and suffering.

"You’ll make a fine sword."

_You said you were my sword_

_You said that you would always be by my side_

Kaneki bites at his bottom lip, fully aware of how selfish and petulant his protestation sounded. Even if things were to repeat, it would simply be a case of eternal recurrence waltzing across the dance floor.

Strangely enough, the thought was comforting. For although that future he once could have had as a Kamii University student, reading novels, day-dreaming and hanging out with Hide had an irresistible charm and simplicity, the Kaneki Ken now was loath to part with the path he had trodden on. For it was here that he learnt that our fears and scars, hopes and dreams, whether ghoul or human, were all one and the same.

And thus, he could be both a human and a ghoul.

 

He had never felt this lucid before.

As both IXA and the night fell, he soared.


End file.
